Featured
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News |
Nearly half of China’s major cities are sinking — some ‘rapidly’
Tens of millions of people in the country’s coastal lands might find their homes below sea level by 2120 owing to sinking and sea-level rise.
- Xiaoying You
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Research Briefing |
Artificial intelligence can provide accurate forecasts of extreme floods at global scale
Anthropogenic climate change is accelerating the hydrological cycle, causing an increase in the risk of flood-related disasters. A system that uses artificial intelligence allows the creation of reliable, global river flood forecasts, even in places where accurate local data are not available.
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Correspondence |
Don’t underestimate the rising threat of groundwater to coastal cities
- Daniel J. Rozell
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Article
| Open Access
Global prediction of extreme floods in ungauged watersheds
Artificial intelligence-based forecasting improves the reliability of predicting extreme flood events in ungauged watersheds, with predictions at five days lead time that are as good as current systems are for same-day predictions.
- Grey Nearing
- , Deborah Cohen
- & Yossi Matias
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Correspondence |
‘Global swimways’ on free-flowing rivers will protect key migratory fish species
- Twan Stoffers
- , Catherine A. Sayer
- & Fengzhi He
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Where I Work |
I listen to the sounds this remote wetland makes to learn its rhythms
Peter Chatanga uses weeks-long audio recordings to build a picture of biodiversity in Lesotho’s crucial wetlands.
- Linda Nordling
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Article
| Open Access
Rapid groundwater decline and some cases of recovery in aquifers globally
Analysis of about 170,000 monitoring wells and 1,693 aquifer systems worldwide shows that extensive and often accelerating groundwater declines are widespread in the twenty-first century, but that groundwater levels are recovering in some cases.
- Scott Jasechko
- , Hansjörg Seybold
- & James W. Kirchner
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Outlook |
The human factor in water disasters
Decisions about land use and infrastructure have left little space for water, amplifying the effects of natural disasters and climate change.
- Erica Gies
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Article |
A unified explanation for the morphology of raised peatlands
Physical analysis of processes universal to raised peatlands produces an equation that explains their morphology and carbon storage across biomes, from Alaska to New Zealand.
- Alexander R. Cobb
- , René Dommain
- & Charles F. Harvey
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News |
Grand plan to drought-proof India could reduce rainfall
The major engineering scheme aims to interlink several Indian rivers to support irrigation.
- Rishika Pardikar
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Where I Work |
I ski for miles in the wilderness to measure dust atop snow
Snow hydrologist McKenzie Skiles takes to her skis in rural parts of the United States each spring to track dust’s impact on water resources.
- Virginia Gewin
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Article |
A global rise in alluvial mining increases sediment load in tropical rivers
The assembly and analysis of a 37-year satellite database covering almost 400 mining districts in 49 countries shows that a rise in river mineral mining has substantially increased riverine sediment load in tropical rivers worldwide.
- Evan N. Dethier
- , Miles Silman
- & David A. Lutz
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Research Briefing |
A global picture of methane emissions from rivers and streams
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. A global data analysis measuring the large quantities of methane released by rivers and streams shows that emissions depend on their connections to the surrounding landscape.
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Article
| Open Access
Global methane emissions from rivers and streams
A spatially explicit global estimate reveals that land–water connections are important for regulating methane supply to running waters, and that these connections are vulnerable to both climate change and direct human modifications of the land.
- Gerard Rocher-Ros
- , Emily H. Stanley
- & Ryan A. Sponseller
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News & Views |
Past climate unravels the eastern African paradox
Analyses of sediment from a lake in eastern Africa reveal the relationship between temperature and moisture over the past 75,000 years, and hint at why climate-model projections in the Horn of Africa are at odds with modern trends.
- Rachel L. Lupien
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News |
How Beijing’s deadly floods could be avoided
The floods that have swept China in the past week were exacerbated by poor planning for drainage.
- Gemma Conroy
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Research Highlight |
How much snow is on Mount Everest? Scientists climbed it to find out
Researchers who summited the world’s tallest peak found much more snow there than expected.
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Article |
Agricultural pesticide land budget and river discharge to oceans
A global assessment of the mobility of 92 agricultural pesticides from points of application in major agricultural catchments downstream to rivers and oceans identifies flow pathways and pollution hotspots in which monitoring could improve risk mitigation.
- Federico Maggi
- , Fiona H. M. Tang
- & Francesco N. Tubiello
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Article |
A warming-induced reduction in snow fraction amplifies rainfall extremes
The recent and projected future increase in rainfall extremes in high-elevation areas of the Northern Hemisphere is due to a warming-induced shift from snow to rain.
- Mohammed Ombadi
- , Mark D. Risser
- & Charuleka Varadharajan
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Career Q&A |
Women in engineering: using hydrology to manage Jordan’s scarce water
Esraa Tarawneh says research and data gathering can improve her country’s resilience to droughts and rare flash floods.
- Jacqui Thornton
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Article
| Open Access
Safe and just Earth system boundaries
We find that justice considerations constrain the integrated Earth system boundaries more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading, and our assessment provides a foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people.
- Johan Rockström
- , Joyeeta Gupta
- & Xin Zhang
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News Feature |
Rewilding the planet: how seven artificial islands could help a dying Dutch lake
An archipelago constructed of sand and mud is bringing new life to a dead lake but can this bold experiment have a lasting impact?
- Aisling Irwin
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Comment |
As the UN meets, make water central to climate action
Managing water and climate in tandem would protect water resources, reduce disaster risks, lower greenhouse-gas emissions and assure equitable access.
- M. Feisal Rahman
- , Aditi Mukherji
- & Emmanuel Olet
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Comment |
Flash floods: why are more of them devastating the world’s driest regions?
Shifting weather, changing settlement patterns and a lack of preparedness mean that dryland areas are most at risk from flooding. Researchers need to focus on data collection, early-warning systems, flood protection and more.
- Jie Yin
- , Yao Gao
- & Mingfu Guan
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Article
| Open Access
Oceanic climate changes threaten the sustainability of Asia’s water tower
Weakening blocking effect of the High Mountain Asia on the westerlies-carried deficit in precipitation minus evaporation from the southeast North Atlantic is demonstrated, leading to persistent northward expansion of terrestrial water storage deficit in the Tibet Plateau.
- Qiang Zhang
- , Zexi Shen
- & Gang Wang
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Article
| Open Access
Less extreme and earlier outbursts of ice-dammed lakes since 1900
An assessment of ice-dam failures in six mountain regions shows that extreme peak flows and volumes have declined sharply since 1900, and that ice-dam floods today originate at higher elevations and earlier in the year.
- Georg Veh
- , Natalie Lützow
- & Oliver Korup
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Concerns about data linking delta land gain to human action
- J. H. Nienhuis
- , A. D. Ashton
- & T. E. Törnqvist
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News & Views |
The extent and drivers of global wetland loss
An impressive combination of modelling and data analysis has enabled a new estimate of the extent of wetland losses over the past few centuries — and reveals that an area about the size of India has been lost since 1700.
- Nicholas J. Murray
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News |
A row is raging over Africa’s largest dam — science has a solution
Benefit-sharing is the best way out of the Nile-dam deadlock between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, study finds.
- Miryam Naddaf
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News & Views |
Unconventional tracers show that spring waters on Mount Fuji run deep
A trio of tracers has debunked a long-held model of the origins of spring water on Mount Fuji, revealing interactions between shallow and deep aquifer layers, and providing a fresh approach for probing mountain groundwater flow.
- Lauren Somers
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Climate versus tectonics as controls on river profiles
- Katerina Michaelides
- , Shiuan-An Chen
- & Michael Bliss Singer
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Matters Arising |
Climate versus tectonics as controls on river profiles
- Hansjörg Seybold
- , Wouter R. Berghuijs
- & James W. Kirchner
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News |
Billion-dollar NASA satellite launches to track Earth’s water
SWOT satellite will bounce radar off water bodies to give scientists a new window into climate change and the global water cycle.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Highlight |
Which glaciers are the biggest? Scientists finally have an answer
The world’s record holders are in Antarctica, regardless of how ‘glacier’ is defined.
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Article
| Open Access
The challenge of unprecedented floods and droughts in risk management
Unprecedented floods and droughts bring new challenges for risk reduction, as is clear from this analysis of the drivers of changing impacts in many cases worldwide, with implications for efficient governance and investment in integrated management.
- Heidi Kreibich
- , Anne F. Van Loon
- & Giuliano Di Baldassarre
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Article |
Threshold response to melt drives large-scale bed weakening in Greenland
An analysis of basal-friction variability across western Greenland shows melt forcing influences bed strength in opposite ways in northern and southern Greenland, establishing melt has an important role in ice-sheet evolution that is mainly dictated by whether a region is land or marine terminating.
- Nathan Maier
- , Florent Gimbert
- & Fabien Gillet-Chaulet
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Research Highlight |
Massive floodgates protect Venice — but damage natural areas
The barriers that shield the city of canals from rising sea levels have knock-on effects for local marshes.
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Article |
Geophysical imaging of the Yellowstone hydrothermal plumbing system
High-resolution images derived from airborne geophysical data reveal critical aspects of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system, which can be used to assess geochemical models of the evolution of thermal fluids worldwide.
- Carol A. Finn
- , Paul A. Bedrosian
- & Jade Crosbie
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Research Highlight |
The world’s rivers exhale a massive amount of carbon
Nearly 6,000 measurements from rivers big and small allow scientists to estimate carbon emissions from Earth’s waterways.
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Article
| Open Access
Quantum sensing for gravity cartography
A study reports a quantum gravity gradient sensor with a design that eliminates the need for long measurement times, and demonstrates the detection of an underground tunnel in an urban environment.
- Ben Stray
- , Andrew Lamb
- & Michael Holynski
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Article
| Open Access
Rapid microbial methanogenesis during CO2 storage in hydrocarbon reservoirs
Microbial methanogenesis converts up to 19% of the carbon dioxide injected into an oil field to methane, suggesting that microbial methanogenesis may be a globally important subsurface process.
- R. L. Tyne
- , P. H. Barry
- & C. J. Ballentine
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Article |
Mechanical forcing of the North American monsoon by orography
The core North American monsoon arises through topographic steering of the jet stream, and should be considered as convection-enhanced orographic rainfall produced by a mechanically forced stationary wave.
- William R. Boos
- & Salvatore Pascale
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Article |
Widespread woody plant use of water stored in bedrock
Woody plants across the continental United States make extensive use of water stored in bedrock across diverse climates and biomes.
- Erica L. McCormick
- , David N. Dralle
- & Daniella M. Rempe
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News & Views |
The fraction of the global population at risk of floods is growing
Satellite imaging combined with population data shows that, globally, the number of people living in flood-prone areas is growing faster than is the number living on higher ground — greatly increasing the potential impact of floods.
- Brenden Jongman
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Article |
Satellite imaging reveals increased proportion of population exposed to floods
Satellite imagery for the period 2000–2018 reveals that population growth was greater in flood-prone regions than elsewhere, thus exposing a greater proportion of the population to floods.
- B. Tellman
- , J. A. Sullivan
- & D. A. Slayback
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Article |
Supply chain diversity buffers cities against food shocks
An intensity−duration−frequency model linking food shock risk to supply chain diversity in the USA finds that boosting a city’s food supply chain diversity increases the resistance of a city to food shocks of mild to moderate severity.
- Michael Gomez
- , Alfonso Mejia
- & Richard R. Rushforth
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News & Views |
Most rivers and streams run dry every year
A model of the world’s rivers and streams has been developed to predict which of these watercourses flow all year round and which go dry. The analysis shows that rivers and streams that run dry are ubiquitous throughout the world.
- Kristin L. Jaeger
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Article |
Global prevalence of non-perennial rivers and streams
Non-perennial rivers and streams are mapped globally, showing that more than half of rivers worldwide experience no flow for at least one day per year.
- Mathis Loïc Messager
- , Bernhard Lehner
- & Thibault Datry
